[Note: This posting is cross-posted on the CASE Advancement Summit blog. Click through to read other bloggers' postings based on the New York City conference, taking place July 13—15, 2008. I am pleased to be guest blogging for the Summit.]
With the CASE Summit a week away, it's time to scan the program for sessions that look particularly promising. A couple of sessions I'd like to attend take place while I'm speaking on panels (which is why conference organizers sell audio recordings of concurrent sessions, even though the entire conference, including video and synchronized PowerPoint, should probably be on the web anyway). Anyway, as you might predict, online tools (especially social networks) are among the more frequent topics in the Summit program. Here are some of the session titles:
- The Future of Community and Affinity in an Online World
- Competing with Facebook for Alumni Attention — and Winning!
- Technology with a Human Touch
- The Power of Human Networks®: Increasing Institutional Support
- Social Networking: Is It Worth It? Optimizing Impact for Alumni Relations and Fundraising
This is daunting stuff: two colons, an en-dash, an exclamation point, a question mark and even a Federally registered trademark! (I've written elsewhere recently about commercial content in conferences, but to me, a registered trademark in a session title represents a new degree of...boldness. But I digress.)
Many higher ed bloggers have anticipated key questions about social media which the Summit may help to answer. When it comes to social networks in higher ed, for example:
- eduStyle poses the following question as the subject heading for a recent post: "Universities + Social Sites = ?"
- Over on Eduweb Buzz, a plug for a software business (in the form of a guest blogger posting) discusses the relative pros and cons of social media for higher ed.
- At Swiftkick, Kevin Prentiss rightly decries commercially-built "private walled gardens" for universities.
- And Xopl.com states that "The recent Higher Ed obsession with social networks and "web20" [sic] also serves as a reminder that the end is nigh. As soon as Higher Ed starts doing anything, it is already on the way out."
So what's the biggest risk with social media? Is it in trying to influence the role social sites should play in higher ed? Or in deciding how to implement social features on admissions or alumni web sites? Is it in measuring social tools' contribution to fundraising? Or their effect on print media?
I'm not worried about how we end up using (or not using) these tools; I'm concerned about the lack of personal experience with these sites among higher ed administrators who are asking each other, "What should we do?" Anyone who has given a conference presentation or written a Currents article on technology becomes an instant expert, even if all he did was ask good questions. Asking questions is the critical first step toward learning about our options ("What happens if we do...this?"). Taking the plunge and actually doing something is the all-important second step. And being brave and creative, and doing something untried is what will move our professions into new territory.
Want to know whether social networks are "worth it"? Try some of them out. Want to know which features will work on your site? Try them on someone else's site and then make up your own mind. The biggest risk to higher ed's use of online networks won't be choosing the "wrong" tools, or using them the "wrong" way. It will be failing to experiment because we're afraid of making mistakes. That will inevitably perpetuate the usual trend of only doing what someone else has already done, instead of inventing something new that might benefit our alumni even more.
